Sinead was born in Co. Waterford to a family which valued music, art, literature and languages. She studied in The Crawford College of Art & Design in Cork. During her studies, Sinead’s influences included Impressionism, Rothko, Hughie O’Donoghue and Brian Maguire. During her final year, a visit to Russia became a defining moment; experiencing the real work of Matisse in the Hermitage Museum in Saint Petersburg had a profound effect on her artistic process, freeing her from the constraints of representational art.
Sinead has always been inspired by the beauty of nature and the movement and energy of water. She creates vibrant abstract expressionist paintings. Over the years to express something specific, she has introduced figures into her paintings. The themes are connected by water: light and colour, movement and memory, a sense of presence in a moment in time, and the physicality of the paint in the studi
In the early nineties, Sinead joined forces with Irish artist Carmel Cleary to organise a national touring exhibition, starting in Ireland and visiting an array of countries before finishing in Adelaide in Australia.
Sinead undertook a defining artist residency in the Banff Centre for Arts and Creativity in Canada. While immersed in nature in the Rocky Mountains, she discovered the joy of doing very quick sketches of the fleeting landscape from the over-sized window of the train which transported me from Vancouver to Calgary and during that period she regularly sat and painted en plein air in the mountains.
During lockdown Sinead participated in the Artist Support Pledge. It was created to provide support for artists in a time of crisis. During this time, she received a special recognition award in the category Excellence in Art for her painting ‘On Pause’, curated by lightspacetime.art to celebrate the 10th Anniversary of 2020.
Sinead’s career as a visual artist has spanned 35 years ad her work forms part the OPW collection, along with private collections in Ireland, Europe, Switzerland and America.
Television Appearances:
2003 – TG4 interview about an artist residency in Co. Kerry. 2007- RTE’s Showhouse featured a selection of Sinead’s paintings.
2019 – TG4 interview for Mol Scéal, www.molsceal.ie video story hub from #TG4.
Reviews and Articles:
The Irish Times, The Independent, The Sunday Tribune, Examiner along with local papers in Ireland, Australia, and France.
